Hmph.
I didn't like it.
It was whiny and illogical. As dlowan says, it singles out women to blame in a way that doesn't make sense. The following are quotes I pulled because I had a quibble of some sort with them, I hope I can remember each one.
Quote:"Ironically, perhaps the only impact the feminist drive for equal rights in the workplace has had on this poorest, fastest growing segment of women is as a cheerleader for women's participation in the workplace, no matter how mean her job or how difficult her family burden."
The only impact? Huh? This is opposed to, what, "Stay home and take care of the kids, period?" And attempts to address issues like sexual harrassment, pay differentials between men and women, glass ceiling, all that is just cheerleading, right?
Quote:Perhaps if enough women held power and authority and economic clout they would work to improve the economic lot of women without power and clout; perhaps a high tide of female power would raise all boats. Unfortunately, this has proved not to be true. The most educated and powerful women are the ones most likely to employ nannies, and when they do so, it is very often on the most undesirable terms.
Oh, they employ a nanny, any gains for women they have made are automatically canceled out, then! "Very often on the most undesirable terms..." Stats, please? How is this an either/ or situation? An individual woman in power can do all sorts of things that will help other women, even if she employs a nanny while doing so. It's like if a guy was working hard to amend the working conditions for poor immigrants while *gasp* employing a gardener. He can't do both?
From elsewhere in the article:
Quote:In it you will find the seeds of things we don't like to discuss much, including the elitism and hypocrisy of the contemporary feminist movement, the tendency of working and nonworking mothers to pit themselves against one another, and the way that adult middle-class life has become so intensely, laughably child-centered that in the past month I have chaperoned my children to eight birthday parties, yet not attended a single cocktail party (do they even exist anymore?).
Example of having her cake and eating it too contradiction in the article -- mocking people who would go to cocktail parties while complaining that she never gets to go to cocktail parties anymore.
Quote:To the contemporary feminist, Zoe Baird was a victim principally of the national antagonism toward working mothers, and specifically of a problem common to all such women: there simply isn't enough affordable, high-quality child care in this country. (To the extent that the feminist thinks at all about the Peruvian couple in Baird's employ, it is usually to characterize them as sub-victims of the same problem.)
This whole thing bothers me, but the Zoe Baird part really made me sputter, and really made me doubt her motives. I'm a contemporary feminist, and while I never like having words put in my mouth, that's SO not what I was thinking when that went down. I thought, damn, too bad she did something so stupid, she seemed interesting otherwise. Next? She didn't pay taxes. She was supposed to pay taxes. End of story.
It also bothers me in terms of rhetorical device she uses a same time, being very dismissive of a book but when you read carefully you realize that the actual content of her "dismissal" is nonexistent. The comments surrounding "The Mommy Myth" are very much in the vein of "oh those silly oppressed feminists are at it again"; she agrees with one conclusion (about the far right), but then starts the next paragraph with a "But..."
But that next paragraph has nothing to do with the book she was talking about! She has not critiqued "The Mommy Myth" in any way.
No, if you hire a legal immigrant and pay taxes, you're not part of a system blahbedy blah. That's the poor pity me feminism she's getting all het up about. It's a job opportunity. As job opportunities go, nannying is probably better than working in a sweatshop or McDonald's. In that paragraph, she's making all of the same upper-class assumptions she is accusing others of doing. Lucky pleased as punch her who hates to pick up legos may shudder at the thought of having to be a nanny, but does she really see into the heads of her poor oppressed sisters the way she thinks she does?
Generally, I think a lot of good points were made, and obviously I agree with a lot of them (I've weighed in on them before). In terms of the whole servant class in general, that was one thing that really creeped me out about L.A. EVERYONE had maids, gardeners, etc. We rented, and our landlady's husband was a professional gardener and we were required (like, in the lease) to let him do his stuff every week because she wanted to keep the yard up to L.A. standards. THAT made me very uncomfortable, I'd always go out there and chat, bring lemonade, etc.
But I also think it's silly and annoying that a stay at home mom has a nanny. So clean up legos! Geesh. I really don't trust her overall message or motivation, it seems way too simplistic and way too anti-feminist.